Make Up Academy >Lipstick< Review! :)

I, like many others, have been pretty fascinated by 'Make Up Academy', the fairly recent addition to Superdrug's make up aisle and online store. A lot of MUA's products look rather professional and the prices are so so so cheap! It does make you wonder whether the low prices actually buy you a quality product, but like many other bloggers out there, I am trying to find out.

So I started out with a MUA lipstick as my first product. I was wanting a pinkier colour anyway, and for £1 I though it would be silly not to buy one! My motto whenever I'm buying anything, particularly a cosmetic product, is:

"Try a cheaper one first. If the cheaper version of a lipstick (for example) is of the quality you want then you've saved money not buying something more expensive, and if it isn't any good then you've not wasted as much money as you would've done if you'd bought something more expensive that was no good! Then, once you find your favourite product, you've saved money doing it this way and via a slight bit of trial and error you've found the best thing for you." That's my philosophy, take note if you wish :)

...Anyway back to the lipstick! There were a fair few different colours to choose from, and I tested this one on my hand and therefore decided to give it a go.

Packaging
It looks like a general lipstick from the outside, and by that I mean one that cost more than £1! You might expect it to look worse than it does, for what you paid for it. The silver lettering on the side can be scratched quite easily, but that happens to the most expensive of products!

 



Smell
It has qutie a pleasant fragrance, that I'd describe as biscuits/sweets. Kind of a mixture of the two! In my opinion it's quite a nice smell.

Colour
I chose shade 12 - a warm bright pink. I wanted a nice girly pop of colour for my face (not that I'm the most girliest of girls to say the least anyway, but I do enjoy make up). On my hand it looks nice enough, and you can see that it has glitter in it. The glitter doesn't overpower the colour when it's on my lips which I'm glad about; it just gives that extra bit of interest when it catches the light. Sometimes glittery lipsticks can look a bit cheap and tacky - not in this case!

Before & After

Forgive my 'blogging beginners photography' on this post, it'll improve I promise! As you can see I have naturally quite pale pink-nude lips. However with a full coverage of this lipstick I think it's a little too much colour for my face. So what I like to do is blot it so the colour is toned down a bit. This way you can actually get more colours out of one lipstick, depending on how much you apply.





Characteristics

This does not dry out my lips, which is a relief! It's annoying when that happens, but if it does occur to you with certain lipsticks you can put some lipbalm on before lipstick which is what I do sometimes :) When you 'rub' your lips together it does feel like a lipbalm in itself, I'm wondering if it does indeed has lipbalm properties! However it doesn't have great staying power when eating and drinking etc. And you can end up with quite a lot of colour-loss in the middle of your lips. At least it's nice and creamy and easy to re-apply! I find there's better staying-power if you apply 1 layer, blot dry and then apply a 2nd layer to the colour intensity you desire :) Alternatively you could try applying a lip-sealant such as Lipcote (which I love).

So...
All in all, great value for £1. It has a couple of bad points but they're nothing compared to the good points. You could always treat yourself to a couple of extra colours! I'm a very satisfied customer and I'll certainly be buying from MUA again. Just try and remember not to get too carried away; only buy something when you actually need it/are running out of a particular item, and treat yourself every so often too! Not too often of course ;)

Hope you enjoyed my first review :D
See ya soon xxx